Grace: That Elusive Reality

What is grace? Ask a dozen people, get a dozen answers. Perhaps the simplest definition I have ever heard is “God’s life in us.” While accurate and true, this definition only begins the scratch the surface of the workings of this great mystery that is as profound as God himself.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, grace is “favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.” There are several levels of truth in this definition. The first is that it is God’s favor, God chooses to gift us with his very self. There is nothing that we can do to “make” God grace us, there is nothing we can do to render us deserving of his grace. As humans, we are all sinners and no personal effort can elevate us beyond that status.. The best that we can do is humbly open our hands and our hearts to our Creator so that nothing impedes his action towards us and in us.

It is also important for us to remember that we are responding to his call. We may believe that we are choosing God, that we have made the election to follow him, to offer him our lives; but no, he calls, he chooses, he reaches out his loving hand and gives us the opportunity to reply. The initiative is never ours, it is always his. The response, however, is always ours. As much as he loves us and desires our salvation, he never compromises the freedom with which we were created. This is an essential and irrefutable element of the relationship between the Creator and his creatures. He calls, we answer, and he graces us with his very self.

We believe as Catholics that it is in the Sacrament of Baptism that we receive sanctifying grace, the specific gift of grace which renders us children of God, adoptive sons and daughters of the Almighty and adopted brothers and sisters of Christ. In this beautiful sacrament, God actually shares his divine life with us. While we do not become divine of course, we remain human, we do partake in his divine life, in one word: we are graced.

Thus, the life of grace officially begins at baptism – ideally the beginning of a journey of faith in which there is a constant give and take between the calls of God and our responses. It is to the degree that we are open to the still small calls whispering in our hearts that God finds the opening to bless us with his presence and love.

But what about those who have not been baptized yet whom are blessed in many ways and reflect God’s love in their lives? What about those who have not heard of the existence of God and his Beloved Son Our Lord Jesus Christ? What about those who have been baptized but have rejected God and still seem to possess the benefits of grace? These are difficult questions that have been wrestled with over the centuries by lay people, clergy and gifted theologians. The last words of the definition of grace in the Catechism speak of eternal life. This is the ultimate goal of the graced life, that journey that begins at baptism and hopefully ends in the loving arms of the One with whom it all began.